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Where have all the insects gone? The tiny creatures on which the world depends seem to be in decline. But what does the data really say — and what is to be done?
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I planted a native garden this year and have been amazed at the variety of bugs I've seen in it. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of bees in this area.
As I've taken up gardening on a small scale, I've noticed a strong trend, especially in permaculture, of dismissing flowers as frivolous. Real gardens contain food. You aren't like those silly neighbors down the street with a love of lilacs and tulips, you're a serious gardener! You're saving the planet by growing your own food!
As for bugs, if you see a "bad" bug, spray it with soap and neem oil, or use an organic pesticide. Finding alternative ways to handle things - like by planting marigolds, which many pests hate - took me quite a bit of research to figure out.
Now for a little snark: I know where all the earwigs have gone. They're in my back yard.
I can't understand how you could confuse the two if you've been exposed to them both.
Many (maybe even most) small-scale permaculture gardeners are behind the times and do not practice sustainable growing techniques. They tend to grow much more intensively than commercial farmers do, they often do not practice crop rotation, they typically do not use good hygiene practices around their crops to prevent the spread of pests and diseases, and they seem to be broadly ignorant of some of the most effective IPM (integrated pest management) techniques. Their intentions are good, but there is a lot of ignorance in the community, I believe driven in part by an irrational fear of looking at what commercial growers are doing and taking lessons from them. (The commercial industry benefits from having hefty R&D divisions dedicated to reducing pest and disease issues without spending more on chemicals.)
I spent several years working on a major commercial vegetable farm (specifically breeding vegetables and selling seed to farmers). We grew ornamental flowers around the crops for pollination and IPM purposes. The flowers attract pollinators and give them a more varied, well-rounded diet than crops alone can. And just as importantly (if not more so in several crops), flowers also attract a wide variety of other insects, including beneficial predators (hoverflies, parasitic wasps, lacewings, etc.) and prey insects that help sustain those predators.
Based on R&D research we did, if you are a home gardener or a permaculturalist, I strongly recommend growing plenty of alyssum and ornamental basil (such as Thai basil). If you can stay on top of harvesting the fruit to keep the plants in constant bloom, another really great option is chili pepper plants — preferably varieties that develop many small fruits rather than a few large fruits (you want as many flowers as possible). Parasitic wasps love these plants.
Beyond that, simply grow a diverse variety of flowers of whatever strikes your fancy — ideally plants that are as floriferous as possible (lots of flowers, even if they are quite tiny, and an extended flowering season) — and make sure there are always at least a few different plants flowering at any given time during the growing season. Try to get a range of species that are not related to each other (e.g., don't just go all in on Asteraceae) and preference flowers that you've noticed are hubs of activity in your garden (even if they might not be in someone else's; that flower might be filling an ecological gap that is missing from your yard). This will greatly improve the long-term health and productivity of your vegetable garden, so long as you aren't using insecticides because that will undo the good that the flowers are doing (permaculture gardeners are typically very good about this, but more general gardeners often do make this error).
To the extent that it is possible, grow these flowers extremely close to the crops; don't just have an ornamental garden in your front yard and vegetables in your backyard. For example, if you grow in rows, punctuate the rows with a small section of flowers every 10-20 feet. If you grow in blocks or raised beds, have a flower section in the middle or tuck flowers into the corners. You want to make it as easy as possible for insects to move between your flowers and your vegetables.
Permaculture has a bit of that whiff of woo around it, like other "newly re-discorved" topics such as homeschooling and natural home births and veganism...... Folks ride the convert zeal and go all in. Also content creators get a lot of attention fanning this zeal.
Thanks for the note on alyssums and Thai basil! I love both and I'll try some next season. Are the wasps willing to eat earwigs? Would they become a danger to human gardeners?
Also, does spreadung diatomaceous earth help with pests?!
Parasitic wasps are harmless to humans. They do not sting, and most of them are so small that you would probably mistake them for gnats or midges. There are some species that are larger, so don't go killing unidentified wasps willy nilly, but they generally look pretty distinctive from the stinging wasps. For example, compare this parasitoid wasp (notice the long and flexible ovipositor and abdomen, which are used to reach their hosts) to this this stinging wasp (notice the much more chunky, inflexible body shape and the communal nesting behavior).
I don't know of any parasitizing wasps that lay their eggs in earwigs, but there are some tachinid flies that do. Most of these flies are also pollinators, so they are another great reason to grow flowers. They go nuts for bright yellow flowers in particular.
There are lots of creatures that eat earwigs as well: bats, lizards, wolf spiders, centipedes, praying mantises, birds, predatory wasps (especially the ones that do sting humans, unfortunately), etc. Nocturnal insectivores are particularly important for earwig control, so encourage ecological diversity in your garden and turn off artificial lights overnight. It will also help if you reduce earwigs' favorite hiding places; you don't have to eliminate these spaces entirely, but if you can interrupt long pathways (e.g., by only placing mulch where it's required) to force traveling earwigs out into the open occasionally, it will make it much easier for predators to catch them.
Diatomaceous earth is effective at killing small creatures with exoskeletons, but it only works while it is bone dry. I would generally only recommend it for indoor applications (e.g., inside chicken coops) or during long periods of very dry weather. And be aware that it will kill good bugs as well as bad bugs, so I suggest only using it in situations where that is not an issue (e.g., treating your chickens for mites or controlling roaches/ants in your kitchen).
I'm more on board with the regenerative folks. I guess I was looking for kind of a system because all of the research I've found is so targeted on large scale farming. The food at my local college extension are incredibly helpful, though.
This is incredibly helpful, thanks! I've also noticed that bees go crazy for borage. I have so much volunteer borage right now, haha.
I'm not a big expert but given how we absolutely have both.. I don't understand that either.
Yeah the difference between crickets and cicadas is crazy. I feel like that has to be a joke cause once you've heard them it's night and day.
Re: cicadas.
There's a 30 year old anime series called Evangelion, about a post apocalyptic world where things are, let's say, bad. It's long been one of the points of optimism for me that they still have cicadas aplenty in their eternal summers.
Yeah I still gotta finish that one, it's my roommates favorite. I guess still having cicadas is a good sign that the environment isn't completely ruined.
We planted a flower garden in front of our kitchen window shortly after moving in and I really love going out to watch the bees and other pollinators -- the variety is amazing, from extremely tiny little flies to big fat bumblebees. I can sit out there and watch them for hours. It also attracts a lot of butterflies, birds, frogs, etc. So much more interesting than the monoculture lawn that we removed.
In the back yard we put in a vegetable garden and fruit trees. The vegetable garden is surrounded by flowers, mostly native some edible, and is a joy to see how colorful and pretty it is.
One of my favorites is Agastache foeniculum (Anise hyssop), which some sources claim is a native here and some claim is not, so I'm not certain, but it attracts SO MANY BEES and hummingbirds too, and the golfinches love to eat the seeds, which is always quite the show. Not only that, the leaves taste amazing.
I had been on the fence about anise hyssop because I'm a licorice hater, but I think you've just convinced me.
Mirror: https://archive.is/tvnld
We cover most of the arable land with poison and wonder why creatures are dying off en mass, news at 11.
When I was a kid, just 20 years ago, I remember bug splatter on cars being a thing where I lived.
I never had to deal with bug splatter when I got my first vehicle.
Is that in the same area on the same roads? It's a very location-dependent thing that can even vary between different roads in the same area.
I can confirm this from my childhood home between 1994ish and 2014ish a drastic dropoff.
I remember the adults used to have to clean the windshields every time they fill up. More frequently during longer drives into "the sticks" of Langley (still city).
I live in rural Canada now and I don't remember the last time I have to clean the windshield. Not even during or after a 6 hour round trip.
Not to mention habitat destruction, and the mere fact that farmland contains much less biomass than wild land with all ecological niches occupied. Even for an insect that doesn't encounter pesticide and can eat basically anything to survive, there's just less stuff around to feed on.